


Imperfect Consolation

by Lenore



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, Episode Tag, Incest, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Substitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-17
Updated: 2011-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:26:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/pseuds/Lenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't always get what you want, and getting what you need can be messy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperfect Consolation

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to my beta readers [](http://catmoran.livejournal.com/profile)[**catmoran**](http://catmoran.livejournal.com/), [](http://joyfulgirl41.livejournal.com/profile)[**joyfulgirl41**](http://joyfulgirl41.livejournal.com/), and [](http://stone-princess.livejournal.com/profile)[**stone_princess**](http://stone-princess.livejournal.com/) for (hopefully!) helping me make this story a little less bleak than it was.

Dean and Sam say goodbye to their father and fall into their lives again, new case, new town, same old thing. The scars heal, at least the ones they can see, just a few pale lines left on their faces, only noticeable when the light hits them the right way. They check out a ghostly statue in a moth-eaten Iowa town, fight off a witch in the Badlands, hunt down a werewolf near the Canadian border. They spend long hours driving, and Sam bitches as always when Dean pops in the Whitesnake tape. They stop at falling-down motels, and Dean flushes the toilet while Sam's in the shower because ancient plumbing is brotherly payback just waiting to happen. They clean their guns and do their research, stock up on holy water, memorize spells. A funeral note has been sounding in the background of their lives for as long as they can remember. They know how to ignore things they can't change.

It takes a full week for Sam to break their conspiracy of silence, longer than Dean was expecting. They're sitting at the linoleum-topped table in their room, grinding angelica root, trying to judge whether they've gotten it fine enough in the weak light of the lone lamp.

Sam doesn't lift his head from his work. "Just because I don't want this life, doesn't mean I don't want to be your brother."

He says it quietly enough that Dean might not have heard him if he weren't so attuned to even slight shifts in Sam's breathing. Dean doesn't glance up or pause. Every now and then, he figures, he deserves to take the easy out.

They put away their gear away, and Dean pulls on his jacket. He goes out more often now, always by himself.

"I'll be back in a little while."

Sam glances up from his computer. "If you end up in jail, I'm not bailing your ass out."

Dean makes a "who me?" face, and Sam shakes his head. They each have a part to play in this charade of everything's fine, and it's all well rehearsed.

Dean gets in the car and starts driving. Even in the smallest backwater town there's someplace where the desperate people go, and Dean's got the unerring instincts to find it. He settles at the bar, bends over his beer while he searches the room out of the corner of his eye. There's no shortage of dark-haired boys with long legs and sweet mouths in this world. He spots one, and their eyes catch, and Dean knows a willing look when he sees one.

He flashes a smiling promise as he gets, throws down money for his drink. It doesn't take long before he has company out in the alley. It isn't Sam, and it's just sex, but Dean needs something, and he can hardly ask a stranger, "Hey, could you make fun of my hair and move things with your mind and be the person I've been carrying out of the fire for the last twenty years?"

Afterwards, he walks away with the same questions he always has, damned if he knows what he's trying to prove. Maybe he wants to believe there's something else besides Sammy, some consolation in strangers. Maybe he's just practicing goodbye.

* * *

They head south in search of other jobs. In Toulah, Louisiana they come across a will o' the wisp, dancing lights out in the bayou luring weekend fishermen and amateur boaters to their deaths, four confirmed drowned and two more still missing. Dean hates cases where it's a bad _place_ they have to fight. It's so much more satisfying when he can put evil's face on a dartboard his mind. Their father's book prescribes an incantation and burning as much of the affected area as possible. Dean perks up a little at that. He's in the mood for a conflagration.

They rent a boat and follow the lights. Sam chants in Latin while Dean pours on the kerosene. They step back, and Dean flips the match. Anything that's not too wet goes up instantly. Even from ten feet away the blaze feels righteous on Dean's skin. They don't have any trouble finding their way back, so Dean figures it must have worked.

He takes a long shower afterwards, but still smells a little like arson when he's done. He gets dressed, fishes for his keys in his pocket. "I'll be back in a little while."

Sam veers off script this time, "Don't."

His eyes are hard and begging, and it feels more natural than anything to give in to that, but for once Dean doesn't.

He goes to a convenient dive not far away. There's something off about the place, he feels it the moment he steps inside, edge of violence that makes his instincts buzz. He plunks down at the bar anyway, orders his beer, does his usual reconnaissance. There's a man at a table near the back, dark curls spilling out from under a feed store cap, one ham hand wrapped around a bottle of Dixie. His tanned face has the baked on quality of someone who spends his days working construction. When he catches Dean's eye, his mouth pulls down at the corners, the universal sign of small-town suspicion.

Dean's attention wanders on, but when the man unfolds himself from his chair, stretches, grabs for his jacket, Dean's gaze quickly lurches back. The line of his shoulders, the way he moves—for a second it's like watching his brother.

The man stops just two stools down from Dean to trade a few good-natured insults with the bartender on his way out. His eyes slide in Dean's direction, and if Dean didn't depend on his powers of observation to save his ass on a regular basis he might have missed the slight tilt of the man's head toward the exit sign.

Dean waits a few minutes before he follows. Out in the parking lot, he walks between the cars, but sees no one. He's starting to think he misunderstood when he spots the man at last, leaning against a cherry red pickup parked in the shadows beneath a magnolia tree.

"You looking for me?" the man says.

Instinct kicks at Dean as he walks over there. He knows for a fact he's being an idiot, but there's no such thing as being a little lost.

"Nice night, huh?" he ventures casually.

The other man isn't much in the mood for pleasantries. His hand shoots out, grabs hold of Dean's wrist. He drags Dean around to the other side of the truck, slams him against it. The paint is faded in patches and there are long scratches in the metal that Dean notices up close and personal with his face mashed against it. He always has believed you can judge a man by how he keeps his vehicle.

The man pushes Dean's jeans down over his hips. "This what you come for, faggot?"

A half dozen ways of knocking this redneck on his ass pass through Dean's head, but he doesn't act on any of them.

"This what you want?" the voice is ugly-slurred against Dean's ear as the man forces his way inside.

Only pain can blot out pain, Dean knows. Maybe that's what he's doing here. Maybe this is just necessary.

It's a quick fuck. Losers lack stamina, that's a scientific fact or something, Dean feels certain. The man comes with a grunt of triumph, and he's still looking smug even after he's pulled out and zipped up.

"That enough for you, faggot? 'Cause I got friends who'd—"

Dean's fist knocks away the rest of that sentence. The man hits the dirt with a startled thud, and the steel of Dean's boot connects with his ribs. He keeps on kicking, long past the point where the man is begging. Hurt and be hurt, endlessly. Maybe that's just the way it is.

* * *

Dean doesn't expect Sam to notice anything. The stink of come and stale cigarettes, his brother has proven time and again, is something he's perfectly willing to ignore.

But Dean has failed to consider his scraped, raw knuckles, and Sam is up from the bed, looking concerned the moment Dean comes through the door.

"Jesus. What the hell happened?"

Dean waves him off. "Nothing. Give it a rest, Sammy."

He walks past him to the bathroom, closes the door, turns on the shower. He mechanically strips off his clothes. There are spots of blood on the back of his shorts, and he kicks them away, just like he kicked that redneck.

The water is close to scalding when he steps beneath it, and that feels right. He closes his eyes, scrubs his hands over his face, reaches for the soap. It isn't terribly long before a rush of air signals the door opening. Apparently, this is one of those times when Sam just can't leave it alone.

Dean expects Sam to start talking, but he doesn't, and then the curtain jerks open.

Sam's eyes are bruises in his pale, bleak face. "Who was it, Dean? Tell me where you were. What they looked like. How I can find them."

Sam is also eagle-eyed by necessity, Dean often forgets, and not above checking Dean's clothes for blood. Sam stares at him, waiting for an answer, smelling like the air before a storm, dangerous with potential.

Dean shakes his head. "It wasn't...anything I didn't let happen." Sam doesn't budge, and Dean adds more quietly, "Just leave it, Sammy. Let me finish up in here, okay?"

Sam turns, and the shower curtain falls closed. Dean listens to Sam's boots go thudding away, and he lets out a heavy breath.

He stays in the shower until he feels clean, wraps a towel around his waist, heads to the dresser for clothes. Sam is walking a tense line back and forth between the TV and the nightstand.

Dean roots around in the drawer, looking for clean sweat pants. Sam comes to an abrupt halt, his gaze sharp enough to sink right into Dean's skin. "Is that really what you want?"

Dean could say "you already know what I want," but he doesn't.

Sam comes closer. "Because…I could. I can."

Almost nothing takes Dean off guard, but this does. Sam's hands close around his shoulders, steer him urgently to the bed. Dean tumbles backwards onto the edge of it, and Sam kneels down, looks up.

He pushes away the towel, runs a shaking hand over Dean's thigh. "I'd do anything for you."

Barely a whisper, and the room feels suddenly airless.

Sam kisses Dean's belly, hesitates, and Dean wants to tell him to stop, because it's not too late and they can still figure a way out of this. But he doesn't, and Sam does, brush of his lips against Dean's cock, then his tongue, then his mouth, fumbling and sweet.

Dean reaches for Sam, hand in his hair. All he can react to at first is the physical part of it, the heat and tightness, the desperate more-more pounding away inside him. It takes an actual thought to finally fracture the pleasure. _Sam will fuck me, but he won't fucking stay with me._ It makes Dean fleetingly vicious, pulling at Sam, pushing into him, until Sam starts to choke. It's only then that Dean realizes what he's doing, making his kid brother make it up to him with his mouth.

Sam stops coughing and tries to begin again. Dean catches him around the shoulders and pulls him against his chest. "No, Sammy."

Sam struggles to get free, stubborn as always, and Dean tightens his hold.

"Sam."

The squirming subsides, and Dean feels Sam's breath ragged against his ribs. Dean strokes his hair the way he used to do when Sam was sick or scared as a little kid.

"It's okay, Sammy. We're okay."

The look in Sam's eyes says he isn't too sure about that, but he picks himself up from the floor, settles onto the bed. Dean goes to put on some clothes, comes back. He darts a sidelong glance at his brother. Sam is staring at the floor, his eyes boring holes into the dirty orange shag.

They just sit there, without a word, for a ridiculously long time.

At last Dean makes himself admit, "I know it can't ever be the way it was."

Sam glances up. "I don't want it to be the way it was when I went off to Stanford either. Us not talking, not seeing each other." He hesitates. "There was...a lot I didn't understand then. I won't get it wrong again, Dean. I swear."

Sam holds Dean's eye earnestly, and Dean doesn't look away. He can see so many things in Sam, reassurances he's never quite been able to believe: _it's not you I want to leave_ and _I'll always be there when you need me_ and _this is hard for me too_.

Maybe consolation is always imperfect, Dean thinks. Maybe everyone survives just the same.

He takes a long breath and lets it out. "Okay, Sammy," he says at last. "Okay."


End file.
